I agree with Annoyance here. My guess is that a higher IQ may help the individuals in the situations Hughristik describes, but this is not the type of evidence we should consider very convincing. In this example, I would guess that differences in the individual’s desire and ability to think through the consequences of their actions is far more important than differences in there IQ. This may be explained by the incentives facing each individual.
In this example, I would guess that differences in the individual’s desire and ability to think through the consequences of their actions is far more important than differences in there IQ.
This may be true, but “ability to think through the consequences of actions” is probably not independent of general intelligence. People with higher g are better at thinking through everything. This is what the research I linked to (and much that I didn’t link to) shows.
This graph from one of the articles shows that people with higher IQ are less likely to be unemployed, have illegitimate children, live in poverty, or be incarcerated. These life outcomes seem potentially related to considering consequences and planning for the long-term. If intelligence is related to positive individual life outcomes, then it would be unsurprising if it is also related to positive group or world outcomes.
In the case of avoiding use of nuclear weapons, there is probably only a certain threshold of intelligence necessary. Yet from the historical example of the Cuban Missile Crisis, the thinking involved wasn’t always trivial:
We had to send a U-2 over to gain reconnaissance information on whether the Soviet missiles were becoming operational. We believed that if the U-2 was shot down that—the Cubans didn’t have capabilities to shoot it down, the Soviets did—we believed if it was shot down, it would be shot down by a Soviet surface-to-air-missile unit, and that it would represent a decision by the Soviets to escalate the conflict. And therefore, before we sent the U-2 out, we agreed that if it was shot down we wouldn’t meet, we’d simply attack. It was shot down on Friday [...]. Fortunately, we changed our mind, we thought “Well, it might have been an accident, we won’t attack.” Later we learned that Khrushchev had reasoned just as we did: we send over the U-2, if it was shot down, he reasoned we would believe it was an intentional escalation. And therefore, he issued orders to Pliyev, the Soviet commander in Cuba, to instruct all of his batteries not to shoot down the U-2.
Both sides were constantly guessing the reasoning of the other.
In short, we do have reasons to suspect a relationship between intelligence and restraint with existentially risky technologies. People with higher intelligence don’t merely have greater “book smarts,” they have better cognitive performance in general and better life and career outcomes on an individual level, which may also extrapolate to a group/world level. Will more research be necessary to make us confident in this notion? Of course, but our current knowledge of intelligence should establish it as probable.
Furthermore, people with higher intelligence probably have a better ability to guess the moves of other people with existentially risky technologies and navigate Prisoners’ Dilemmas of mutually assured destruction, as we see in the historical example of the Cuban Missile Crisis. We don’t have rigorous scientific evidence for this point yet, though I don’t think it’s a stretch, and hopefully we will never have a large sample size of existential crises.
I’m not sure we have serious disagreements on this. Research on intelligence enhancement sounds like a good idea, for many reasons. I’m just choosing to emphasize that there are probably other much more effective approaches to reducing existential risks, and its by no means impossible that intelligence enhancement could increase existential risks.
When I said “smartness,” I was thinking of general intelligence, the g-factor. As it happens, g does have a high correlation with IQ (0.8 as I recall, though I can’t find the source right now). g is a highly general factor related to better performance in many areas including career and general life tasks, not just in academic settings (see p. 342 for a summary of research), so we should hypothesize that nuclear missile restraint is related to g also.
As it happens, g does have a high correlation with IQ
Someone who knows the details of this is welcome to correct me if I’m wrong, but as I understand it g is a hypothetical construct derived via factor analysis on the components of IQ tests, so it will necessarily have a high correlation with those tests (provided the results of the components are themselves correlated).
Correct. g is the degree to which performances on various subtypes of IQ tests are statistically correlated—the degree that performance on one predicts performance on another.
It’s a very crude concept, and one that has not been reliably identified as being detectable without use of IQ tests, although several neurophysiologic properties have been suggested as indicating g.
What relationship does the kind of ‘smartness’ possessed by the individuals in question have with IQ?
I don’t think there are good reasons for thinking they’re one and the same.
I agree with Annoyance here. My guess is that a higher IQ may help the individuals in the situations Hughristik describes, but this is not the type of evidence we should consider very convincing. In this example, I would guess that differences in the individual’s desire and ability to think through the consequences of their actions is far more important than differences in there IQ. This may be explained by the incentives facing each individual.
This may be true, but “ability to think through the consequences of actions” is probably not independent of general intelligence. People with higher g are better at thinking through everything. This is what the research I linked to (and much that I didn’t link to) shows.
This graph from one of the articles shows that people with higher IQ are less likely to be unemployed, have illegitimate children, live in poverty, or be incarcerated. These life outcomes seem potentially related to considering consequences and planning for the long-term. If intelligence is related to positive individual life outcomes, then it would be unsurprising if it is also related to positive group or world outcomes.
In the case of avoiding use of nuclear weapons, there is probably only a certain threshold of intelligence necessary. Yet from the historical example of the Cuban Missile Crisis, the thinking involved wasn’t always trivial:
Both sides were constantly guessing the reasoning of the other.
In short, we do have reasons to suspect a relationship between intelligence and restraint with existentially risky technologies. People with higher intelligence don’t merely have greater “book smarts,” they have better cognitive performance in general and better life and career outcomes on an individual level, which may also extrapolate to a group/world level. Will more research be necessary to make us confident in this notion? Of course, but our current knowledge of intelligence should establish it as probable.
Furthermore, people with higher intelligence probably have a better ability to guess the moves of other people with existentially risky technologies and navigate Prisoners’ Dilemmas of mutually assured destruction, as we see in the historical example of the Cuban Missile Crisis. We don’t have rigorous scientific evidence for this point yet, though I don’t think it’s a stretch, and hopefully we will never have a large sample size of existential crises.
I’m not sure we have serious disagreements on this. Research on intelligence enhancement sounds like a good idea, for many reasons. I’m just choosing to emphasize that there are probably other much more effective approaches to reducing existential risks, and its by no means impossible that intelligence enhancement could increase existential risks.
What about the inherent incentive that motivates people even in the absence of strong external factors?
I’m not sure I understand you. Are you referring to the distinction between intrinsic and extrinsic motivation?
More like a distinction between different types of intrinsic factors.
I still have no idea what you’re talking about and how it relates to my comment.
When I said “smartness,” I was thinking of general intelligence, the g-factor. As it happens, g does have a high correlation with IQ (0.8 as I recall, though I can’t find the source right now). g is a highly general factor related to better performance in many areas including career and general life tasks, not just in academic settings (see p. 342 for a summary of research), so we should hypothesize that nuclear missile restraint is related to g also.
Someone who knows the details of this is welcome to correct me if I’m wrong, but as I understand it g is a hypothetical construct derived via factor analysis on the components of IQ tests, so it will necessarily have a high correlation with those tests (provided the results of the components are themselves correlated).
Correct. g is the degree to which performances on various subtypes of IQ tests are statistically correlated—the degree that performance on one predicts performance on another.
It’s a very crude concept, and one that has not been reliably identified as being detectable without use of IQ tests, although several neurophysiologic properties have been suggested as indicating g.